Difficulties arise as the population ages around the world. With improvements in medical technology, life spans increase leaving a greater number of elderly persons that require a certain degree of attention to assure that everyday activities and general health issues are acceptable for such a population segment. Additionally, such aging members of society do not commonly seek living arrangements in a nursing home facility or communal location. Although some elderly persons are placed in such around-the-clock and/or close-quarter situations, many others desire to live in their own homes or apartments, whether it be for financial, logistical, or other reasons. It has further been well-documented that short-term memory loss may be reduced for patients that remain in familiar surroundings and, even with removal from such an environment for as short as a few days, such a patient may suffer unfortunate consequences in this manner. Thus, the benefits of having elderly or other patients susceptible to short-term memory loss issues staying in their own homes are quite substantial. As such, family and friends generally seek suitable methods of monitoring such self-sustaining elderly, etc., persons to ensure safety and health concerns are properly met.
Furthermore, there are people within a narrower segment of society that face the unfortunate issues of early onset dementia while also desirous of sustaining his or her own household. Such a situation may not automatically cause a caregiver or family member to seek professional help, such as a nursing home or like facility, for constant monitoring and safety issues; actually, with early onset of such a disease or condition (such as, for example, Alzheimer's) a patient may exhibit short-term memory loss or other reduction in mental capacity at that point and certain activities or therapeutic methods utilizing the patient's mental faculties may help to prevent further deterioration. Constant presence of a caregiver for such a purpose may prove too expensive for such an endeavor. As well, the lack of a familial subject to aid in such a mental exercise through voice and visual commands and/or stimulations militates against the utilization of an outside subject for such a purpose in many situations. However, the constant presence of a family member (or like close friend, as one example) may not prove feasible, either, as such a person may not have the time, resources, and wherewithal to provide such around-the-clock attention. Memory stimulation from a suitable source may thus provide the desired therapeutic effect while allowing the patient to remain in their own familiar surroundings.
As such, there exists a definite need to provide a beneficial system, method, and/or device that allows for constant monitoring as well as providing potential therapeutic mental exercises for a patient. Such a device should not rely solely on the patient's input or activity in order to enable a monitoring system to operate. Likewise, such a system should not prove appreciably invasive into the patient's life (through, for example, constant video monitoring). Additionally, any constant video monitoring would prove extremely difficult for a monitor to undertake throughout an entire day, not to mention the privacy issues the patient would not want to lose. As a result, any such system would necessarily allow for an interested and authorized party to elicit a proper response from the patient directly through the system, as well as the capability to either generate on demand a mental exercise program or the ability of such an interested and authorized party to set up a pre-scheduled session (or multiple daily sessions) of such a mental exercise program for the patient's benefit.
In the past, and up to today, the industry that pertains to helping monitor family members has centered on broad tracking, video viewing, and/or self-reporting devices. For instance, personal tracking devices have been found to be useful in locating missing persons. Such tracking devices typically use a network of Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) in low earth orbit that broadcast precise timing signals from on-board atomic clocks. Using triangulation formulas, a device that picks up signals from several satellites simultaneously can determine its position in global coordinates, namely latitude and longitude. Thus, an object and/or person carrying the GPS device may be located provided the appropriate equipment and trained personnel are available for determining the location of the GPS device. Such devices are clearly limited to situations that concern placement of proper reporting/monitoring phones, computer chips, and the like, and offer after-the-fact help once a person has gone missing. Such devices also provide nothing beyond a tracking benefit; therapeutic and/or responsive reporting is unavailable.
There are standard systems in place today that include audio as well as, in some circumstances, audiovisual communications, in nursing homes and like facilities. Such devices are used primarily as communication devices as well as for emergency notification purposes. Beyond that, however, such systems are rather limited in that communications are reliant upon the activity of a patient/tenant and are generally located in specific facilities. Otherwise, the utilization of cell phones and/or computers serve much the same purpose. In terms of providing overall services for patients suffering from dementia, memory loss, or other like symptoms, there is no component within such systems and processes that takes into account such a specialized type of situation. With the potential for decreased mental capacity, a patient's ability to properly operate and/or activate such a device is highly suspect. Such a lack of direction in that respect thus limits the usefulness of such a typical communication system and leaves a rather significant portion of society without suitable offerings to not only help such patients in terms of therapeutic benefits, but do not allow for automatic notifications if lack of communication from a patient occurs.
Likewise, there are devices that patients may keep with them constantly to permit instant notification of health problems. Such devices that are worn by a user for the purpose of instantaneous notification of health or status difficulties have been utilized for many years. Although such devices may provide a certain degree of comfort to both user and family members (or friends) that reports of such problems may be handled quickly and reliably, such may not be the case with patients suffering from certain degrees of memory loss and other dementia maladies. In actuality, the requisite active nature of such self-reporting devices forces the user to remain vigilant, both in terms of remembering the availability, if not presence, of such a signal device on their person, but the failure of activation likewise prevents proper communication with the necessary authorities and/or family members that any problem is at hand. These devices thus fail to permit an outside party from communicating with the user and thus relies solely upon the user's capacity to understand and activate the device itself. Again, in situations with dementia patients, at least, such a requirement is deficient as to the reliability such a system actually provides all parties involved.
As it stands, although certain systems do exist to allow for both communication with patients in homes, rooms, and other like locations, these are limited to communication alone. There is no consideration with the importance that memory stimulating programs can provide (particularly in a potentially therapeutic environment for early onset dementia patients) in addition to communication capabilities. Likewise, mere distress reporting devices do not allow early onset dementia patients full potential in terms of reliability that status reports will be made timely and properly. The ability to compensate for such reliability deficiencies, as well as the capability of providing at least a combination of therapeutic memory stimulation programs and status reports from such patients to any number of authorized interested outside parties would be highly beneficial to this growing segment of society. As of today, however, such a system and/or device is unavailable within the remote report/dementia patient treatment industry.